Making "Esh" and Chadian Christmas

My house help, Hadidje, has been such a blessing. Not only does she help me around the house with cleaning and washing clothes, but we also spend at least an hour a day "chatting" away in Arabic. Although tiring, it is so good for me. She's much easier to talk to than the ladies at the market, because we're sitting just one on one in a quiet house instead of a noisy market, and she is willing to be patient and wait until I understand what she's saying. She also speaks no French whatsoever, so she's never tempted to switch with me. We have a great time together, sometimes almost rolling on the floor laughing, she cracks me up. So at least once a week I try to do something with her that will be different than our normal "tea time" (that's when we sit on a mat on the ground, sipping very sweet tea and eating peanuts...I have been able to skip the tea the last week, I don't know how they do that much caffeine and sugar every day!).

So this past week, I asked Hadidje if she would teach me how to make "Esh" as it's called in Arabic, or "Boule" as it is called in French. It's basically a big bowl full of millet flour and water, that is cooked over high heat until congealed to the consistency of wet dough and then left to set in a round bowl until ready to eat, when it is flipped over onto a plate, a nice little dome for you to grab pieces off of and plunge them into the burning hot sauce. I took some pictures of the process for you to enjoy! In the first (above) she is smashing up the garlic for the sauce (which consisted of beef, bouillion, tomato paste, peanut paste oil, garlic and onions...and a little dried okra...I resisted, but she insisted!) I offered her a garlic press, but she said she preferred the giant mortar and pestle! The second picture is when she is very rapidly beating the flour and water mixture, as it attempts to stick to the pot (this is normally done over a fire, but we chose to use the stove that day). And finally, the fruits of the 2 hour long labor, a nice lunch.

The next pictures here are of our attempt at Christmas cheer here in Abeche, Chad. Since our container, though in Cameroon, has still not made it up here, carrying our Target Christmas tree, we decided it was high time to make one! So, Rob bought some sticks, normally used to build the straw roofs on houses here. I found some dark green fabric with a subtle holly pattern on it in the market, and also some cream colored fabric with glittering gold dots on it (don't ask me why they had this at the men's clothing market!!). So we built our little "Charlie Brown" and I think it's quite cute! Thanks to some shiny red bows I had brought from France, and a two Christmasy headscarves, I managed to make the coffee table look festive, and I am very thankful to report that our Nativity set has made it with us all the way from North Carolina in 2006 to Abeche, Chad for this 2008 Christmas, as well as our stockings! Hadidje thinks the Nativity set is amazing. She asked me if I bought it in Abeche, because she'd never seen anything like it. Nope, from America, I informed her!

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